


stars are falling all for us

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon), noxfleuret



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, it gets there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 21:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxfleuret/pseuds/noxfleuret
Summary: When Noctis met Lady Lunafreya of Tenebrae, she was eight, and he was twelve.He'd thought she was kind of weird at first, with her too-formal way of talking and her somber stare and her talk of Kings and Oracles and destinies, but then he'd decided to call her 'Luna' and it had made her giggle, and a piece of her had lodged itself so deep in his heart he'd never dig it back out again.In which Noctis saves Luna.





	stars are falling all for us

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt:  
>  **Older Noctis/Younger Luna**  
>  _so i noticed that younger noctis is flustered as all hell when he thinks about luna but older noctis was kind of like "IM GONNA KISS U NOW LOL" like he took off his gloves and everything and i kind of melted so!_
> 
> _idk how this would work, but it'd be cute to see older noctis and luna together, the differences in how he treats her and how things work out etc etc._
> 
> _(i'm also just thirsty for more luna development hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA--)_
> 
> and it GOT ME THINKING about an au where noctis is older than luna, which turned into an age swap au, which turned into "what if noctis's _all i wanted was to save you_ urges got turned up to 11 because luna's too smol to be saving the fucking world like this"
> 
> so here u go :') enjoy!

When Noctis met Lady Lunafreya of Tenebrae, she was eight, and he was twelve.

He'd thought she was kind of weird at first, with her too-formal way of talking and her somber stare and her talk of Kings and Oracles and destinies, but then he'd decided to call her 'Luna' and it had made her giggle, and a piece of her had lodged itself so deep in his heart he'd never dig it back out again.

Not that he'd tried much.

The thing was... the Oracle was invincible. The Oracle was a child prodigy who pulled off miracle after feat after triumph, otherworldly magic and worldly salvation poured into the shell of a young girl. The Oracle had awakened Shiva when she was ten, had begun traveling to cure the Scourge when she was twelve, had become a public figurehead when she was fourteen.

In the eyes of the world, the Oracle wasn't quite human.

But Luna was just a girl.

And it was that Luna that wrote to him in their shared notebook. That Luna was scared of the whole world and forging through it anyway, sometimes confessing her worries in shaky handwriting and apologizing with borders of animal stickers, sometimes sheepishly asking for advice after barely packing a tightly scrawled story within the confines of the paper, sometimes covering her whole page with sketched flowers and mountains and people and letting her innocent musings and gentle poetry weave through the cracks.

She was delicate and precious and _vulnerable_ and it drove him _up the wall_ that no one else seemed to see it—or care.

But if advising her and cheerleading her in secret helped, he could do that. If she needed consoling or reassuring or sympathy, he could do that too. If offering to kick the ass of anyone who made her sad meant that he was offering to take on the whole world for her, well...

Someone had to do it.

But for eight long years, he was an ocean away. Words were all he had to give her, and the pain of helplessness set up shop right over that piece of her. She deserved all the good things in the world, deserved to be cherished and protected until she was _ready_ , and if he could switch places her, he would do it in a heartbeat. If he could join her quest to keep her _safe_ then that was all he dreamed of. If he could pay a price for her to wake up somewhere safe and warm with no prophesies or duties or pain to weigh on her slight shoulders, he'd have paid it ages ago.

And that was why he was so profoundly relieved to learn that they'd gotten engaged. Sure, it'd be on paper more than anything else, but even if he barely ever saw her, he could still do things like send the Kingsglaive with her, pay her way to better hotels, and make sure she had decent food on the road.

All he had to do was get to Altissia.

* * *

And then everything went to shit.

* * *

He wasn't quite paying as much attention as he probably should be to his battle with a _literal god_ , but the altar where Luna stood was crumbling with every one of the Hydrean's brutal passes and he was milliseconds from warping down there, grabbing her, and getting the hell out, city be damned.

(The flicker of the look on her face when she'd met his eyes after her speech was still stuck in his mind—heartbreak and resignation and gratitude—and it was making him want to crawl out of his skin.)

But she was standing, standing, bleeding but standing, and there was a rampaging Astral in front of him who _wasn't listening_ and technically he had bigger problems.

And then she wasn't standing anymore, stumbling to her knees and stilling, and Noctis went _cold_ all over.

He was warping down before he'd made the conscious choice to do so.

A blink between and she was in her arms, unbearably fragile and terrifyingly cold.

"Noctis? The Hydrean—"

But Noctis was looking behind her.

"My, my. Saving the girl instead of the city? How downright _heroic_ of you."

Ardyn, with all his slime and crooked edges and unscrupulous leers, was _entirely_ too close to Luna, Noctis decided. That he was getting closer was untenable.

"Now what kind of look is that? I'm only here to he—"

Ultima materialized in Noctis's palm, the tip pointed at Ardyn's throat as close to the jugular as Noctis could manage with numb, slippery fingers and shaking hands.

The smile on Ardyn's face froze, then slunk away. "Tetchy, are we?"

"Get lost."

"Now—"

"Get. Lost."

Luna let her nose dip into the crook of Noctis's neck, her hands feebly fisting in the material of his shirt, silent and trusting.

There was a long moment in which Ardyn wasn't smiling at all, and the cold, calculating look it left behind was almost comforting in its honesty. It said that he was sizing up how easy it would be to kill them, and whether it would be worth it in the end.

That was okay. Noctis was analyzing what Ardyn's fighting style might be like and running through possible ways to get Luna to solid, unwrecked ground so he could fight without worry.

Then the tension released, Ardyn's oily leer making a reappearance as he rocked back on his heels. "Then might I offer the happy couple my congratulations?"

"No."

A flicker of irritation. "A few words of advice then."

"No." Noctis bared his teeth. "Get lost."

Ardyn shrugged it off in a too-graceful motion. "Have it your way, I suppose."

Noctis didn't lower his sword until Ardyn had reboarded the Niflheim ship and the whine of the engines had faded into the crashing waves.

"Hey," he said as soon as he could breathe again. "You okay?"

Up this close, it was obvious to anyone who cared to look that Luna wasn't. Even below the new pallor, her eyes were fever-glassy, her grasp painfully weak. Her own breathing rasped, sitting like her body didn't want to hold her up anymore.

"Leviathan—" she started, then blinked and gave her head a little shake. Behind them, the waves claimed another few of the altar's stones. "No, the— the ring. Your father sent me to deliver the ring."

The ring.

Noctis felt sick.

The Ring of Lucii. The ring that no one but Lucian royalty was supposed to wear, that smited all others—if Luna had been carrying it since Insomnia went down...

She fumbled a chain from around her neck, pulling it over her head and setting its makeshift pendant, the thick-banded ring Noctis had seen on his father's hand all his life, in her open palm. On some metaphysical level, it smelled like death.

Death that was connected to the Oracle's magic, and slowly but surely siphoning it away and taking her lifeforce with it.

Noctis picked up the ring, unceremoniously snapped the chain, and jammed it on his finger, shoving his own magic into it to sever the link.

The results were immediate.

First and foremost, Noctis had an _intense_ urge to go take a nap. The demands of the ring settled under his skin like a cool mist, a gentle downer. It took him a minute to adjust to it, the press of _other_ on his brainstem only coming to bear once the sleepiness had passed—and that was an unpleasant ordeal all on its own.

In the time it took Noctis to acclimate to _that,_ Luna started breathing easier. It was impossible to miss it up this close. How much of it was because he'd taken the ring and how much of it was because the seas had calmed, he didn't know—

—because the seas _had_ calmed. Leviathan had traded city-wrecking for just hovering above the altar, inscrutable.

Then she spoke, that screeching-grinding-otherworldly language of the Astrals, and Noctis was the one burying his face in the crook of Luna's neck this time, a splitting headache crashing over him in the waves Leviathan was known for.

And then it was over, and Luna had just enough time to shout a _thank you!_ at the goddess before she was gone.

The tempest subsided, indiscriminately dropping boats and debris alike into the water.

"...Ow," said Noctis plainly.

The delicate shoulder that pressed against his nose shook with laughter. Quiet laughter, but clear laughter. Already her lungs sounded better.

He raised his head, and—

She was smiling. Dark eyelashes beaded with seawater, blonde hair plastered against her forehead and temples, full mouth resting in the happy curve it was just made for.

—and he wanted to cry.

"You're okay," he said, his voice cracking as the realization hit his numb chest in full.

"I am," she murmured, rasping but reassuring.

"You're _okay,"_ he repeated, trying to convince himself because this was all so real and yet not real at all. He cupped her face, feeling the soft give of her cheeks, the strength of the muscles in her jaw, the solid _reality_ of the bone below it— _she felt real._ "You're okay," he marveled.

"Mhm," she agreed, her smile taking a turn for the fond.

The tears barely stopped as a lump in his throat before they were blurring his vision and making hot tracks down his cheeks through the wet chill.

He brought their foreheads together so he could feel the hot rush of her breath on his face, see those eyes up close. His voice broke into a whisper when he said, _"You're okay."_

There was a subtle strength coming back into her delicate fingers, and he could feel it when she reached up to curl them around his wrist. "And so are you."

And so they were.

* * *

She'd grown during the ten years he'd spent in the crystal.

Obviously—she was twenty-six now, not sixteen. If Prompto and Gladio and Ignis had changed and matured in the past decade, then it could only be expected that she would double it.

It still put a funny swoop in his stomach to see her like this, grounded and graceful and steady.

"You're staring," she noted with a musical lilt.

Noctis flinched, flustered. _Power and wisdom of a hundred late kings and he still got shy around her._ Smiling sheepishly, and he said, "You're... pretty nice to stare at."

It made her blush, and the sight sank into his heart about as much as his ego.

It was a quiet moment in the middle of the rebuilding efforts—one of those moments when he could slip into the apartment across from his and watch Luna press flowers or help her clean her counters or play human pillow while she napped—and it was in this particular moment that it occurred to him that... there was no reason why he couldn't kiss her.

Aside from the bit where she was all the way across the table from him and it would be a lot of work to get up and walk around to her side, but in general. In the _spirit_ of it.

And in the spirit of that...

"We should get married," he decided, apropos of nothing.

She paused, paper-thin sylleblossom held halfway between the press and the big paper envelope where she was keeping them until she got a better storage case. "Pardon?"

Aw hell, even if kissing her wasn't jumping the gun, this definitely was. "I mean." He cleared his throat. "We're still engaged, aren't we?"

"That was not our choice," she said, bemused. Which was probably a clear enough answer on its own. "And the point of it is rather defeated at this point, is it not?"

"...Yeah, I guess." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she put the pressed sylleblossom away. He didn't really want to give this up without getting a clear _no_ , but what could he say?

Luna spoke again before he could decide. Blushing rosy enough to match the pink carnation in her hand, she confessed, "I... I think I'd rather like to marry you though, if you found it agreeable."

"Yeah?" Noctis rose out of his chair. Suddenly, he found that it was worth the effort of walking to her side of the table for the sake of kissing her. Weird how these things happened.

She nodded, flushing a little deeper. She was always beautiful, but he could watch the little crease at the corner of her mouth for _hours_ right now. "It... it would put the people's minds at ease if you were to take a queen, after all, and a wedding might be just the thing to lift their spirits in a time like this."

He half-leaned, half-sat against the edge of the table next to her chair. "That's pretty... rational."

She nodded, a slow, tiny motion, her fingers curling on the worn, polished wood of the old table as she stared at them like they held the secrets of the universe.

Not that the view from here wasn't pretty nice, but he wanted to see her face, and it gave him the perfect excuse to touch her. Trailing his knuckles over the curve of her jaw, he encouraged her to look up at him. "...Can I still kiss you?"

That corner of her mouth jumped into a shy smile. "...If it would please you."

If the words in themselves were cool, then the eager, almost _possessive_ way her arms circled around his neck to yank him closer sure wasn't, her nails scratching his back through his thin t-shirt and her cheek warm in his palm.

Warm, warm, _warm_ and heady, seductive in its innocence and calming in its fervor. It had him bracing his weight against the back of her chair before long, and then on the table too, that piece of her in his chest heavy and aching and needing and _singing_.

"All those years ago... I was so excited to marry you," she whispered between kisses. "I think the servants must have become quite sick of me by the time came, I could talk of little else. I... I loved you so, and I was f-finally going to see you again, and it was like this. I only wished..."

"Only wished what?" he asked in a croak. Maybe he'd give her anything she asked right now, anything at all, but that wasn't special. That was just a given.

He wanted a bed. Not for sex, just so he could wrap her in a million blankets and protect her from everything that came her way, But then, that was just a given, too.

The smile was back again, and he could taste it this time. "Only wished that you had been the one to ask me."

Of all the—

He pulled back as far as she would let him so he could squint at her.

She diverted her eyes, flushing deeper again. She looked distractingly kissed.

There was really only one reply he _could_ give to that.

"Hey Luna," he breathed, resting his forehead against hers. "Will you marry me?"

It was unfair how delighted she looked. He was almost tempted to ask again.

"Yes," she breathed.

"Good," he said fervently, and kissed her again.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a sucker for schmoop ;v;


End file.
